Special Issue
Doctoral Degrees in W/G/S/F Studies: Taking Stock

This special issue revisits a question our journal has taken up before: what are the possibilities and risks of the doctoral degree in women’s studies? Twenty years after we staged a conversation about how to structure doctoral degree programs in the classic 1998 special issue titled “Disciplining Feminism? The Future of Women’s Studies,” and fifteen years after a 2003 forum on interdisciplinary graduate training, we pause and reflect on the state of the field. The landscape of graduate education in women’s studies has certainly changed—there has been unprecedented growth in new PhD programs—but some of the dilemmas faced by doctoral degree holders remain troublingly familiar. The many short peer-reviewed essays in this issue about the doctoral degree in Women’s, Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies (WGSFS), received in response to our call for papers, are organized along three thematic lines: 1) The job market for WGSFS doctoral degree holders, including the relationship between graduate certificates and doctoral degrees in women’s studies; 2) Curricular and methodological challenges within doctoral degree programs; and 3) Structural challenges faced by WGSFS departments and universities. Our authors range from veteran to midcareer scholars to recipients of PhDs granted in the past decade. Our content includes data-driven analyses and proposals for best practices, as well as a wide array of personal narratives. In addition to our articles on the doctoral degree, we have an article and a short story about the topic of sexual assault and education, an art essay, creative nonfiction, and poetry. We should clarify that throughout this issue, departments are named in varying ways (as women’s studies, WGSS, GWFS, etc.), reflecting the array of naming practices in the field; we deliberately decided against imposing a standard name in view of their freighted meanings.

{READ MORE OF PREFACE as PDF}

ORDER THIS ISSUE (PRINT)

ORDER THIS ISSUE (PDF)

The Job Market

Stina Soderling, Carly Thomsen, and Melissa Autumn White
Critical Mass, Precarious Value?: Reflections on the Gender, Women’s, and Feminist Studies PhD in Austere Times
Order this article (pdf)

Jennifer Musial and Christina Holmes
Five-Year Study on Hiring Trends in Gender, Women’s, and Feminist Studies
Order this article (pdf)

Joint Statement by Chairs of PhD-Granting Departments in
Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies in the United States on the Employment of PhD Recipients
Order this article (pdf)

Allison Kimmich
National Women’s Studies Association: Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Placement Data 2018
Order this article (pdf)

Jennifer C. Nash
Feminist Credentials: Notes on the Politics of Women’s Studies Graduate Certificates
Order this article (pdf)

Priti Ramamurthy
AlterNotes on the Politics of Women’s Studies Graduate Certificates
Order this article (pdf)

____________________________________________

Jean Kane
Parastou Forouhar’s Domestic Sublime (Art Essay)
Order this article (pdf)

____________________________________________

Training and Curricular Issues

Michelle V. Rowley, Elora Halim Chowdhury, and Isis Nusair
Refusing to Account:
Toward a Pedagogy of Tectonic Instability
Order this article (pdf)

Ashley Glassburn Falzetti
What Makes an Interdisciplinary Feminist Scholar?
Preparing for the Unknown in a Skill-centered Curriculum
Order this article (pdf)

Amy Bhatt
The Butterfly Effect of Women’s Studies
Order this article (pdf)

Lisa Rofel
A View of Women’s Studies from Afar and Near
Order this article (pdf)

L. Ayu Saraswati
People, Professionalization, and Promises:
Navigating the Politics of PhD Programs in Women’s Studies
Order this article (pdf)

____________________________________________

Structural Challenges

Kristina Gupta
The Structural Vulnerability of Doctoral Students:
A Political and Ethical Issue for Doctoral Programs in Women’s/Gender/Sexuality/Feminist Studies
Order this article (pdf)

Susan Stanford Friedman
PhD in Women’s and Gender Studies:
The European Example
Order this article (pdf)

Abigail Boggs and Nick Mitchell
Critical University Studies and the Crisis Consensus
Order this article (pdf)

____________________________________________

Sexual Violence in Education

Claire Raymond and Sarah Corse
A Distorting Mirror:
Educational Trajectory After College Sexual Assault
Order this article (pdf)

____________________________________________

Creative Writing
Order this group of creative writing (multiple pdfs)

   Jennifer Anne Moses
   The Teacher (Short Story)

   Francesca T. Royster
   Stories We Tell After Orlando (Creative Nonfiction)

   Angela Sorby
   Limn (Poetry)